Will I Lose My Dignity?
by GoldenRoya
Summary: A few snapshots of Angel's hospital stay, his decline, and death, as seen through the eyes of his nurse. Some social commentary, healthcare commentary; rated T for language.


_Like all great works of fiction, fact, and/or tomfoolery, _Rent _is not mine to claim. More's the pity, eh? _

_Okay, I wish to extend an official apology for some of the language in here. NOT the way I speak or think, but appropriate to the character, so hate her and not me. Okay?_

_This has got an unusual amount of my own experience in here. Not with any specifics, but with the general settings. The toughest part about it, I think, was trying to keep the details correct to 1990 - I wasn't even in double digits in 1990, much less paying attention to medicine, technology, and social norms and attitudes, so please forgive me if I go a bit anachronistic at times. Kind of a dual inspiration for this: first, all of the reviewers for my short story, 'Angel's Call Home,' who asked for a sequel and kept my muse turning things over in the back of my brain - a scary place, it looks kind of like primordial soup back there sometimes. And, second, the soundtrack itself, more specifically the song, "Will I?" In my profession, dignity is something that, a lot of times, gets taken for granted. Familiarity with my previous story and/or the song will enhance enjoyment of this fic, but neither is necessary to read this one, as it only briefly touches on either and, indeed, may have such a link only in my primordial-soup of a back brain. As always, please read and review - I'm a total review junkie, and I get a ton of ideas/inspiration from my reviewers!  
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><p>"Filthy queers," muttered Sarah, glaring darkly at Room 209.<p>

Jenny followed her gaze."Andrew Schunard?" she asked, surprised. She liked the young man, and his friends were unfailingly polite to the nursing staff, unlike many of the other patients and their families. Jenny was in the middle of a "crisis" right now, in fact, having failed to bring Mr. Townsend's pain pills _exactly_ at nine o'clock. Sarah followed her gaze at the clock. "9:05," she said, then headed across the pod to room two-oh-nine.

"Visiting hours are over, " she announced. "Everybody out." One of the girls kicked up a fuss, but her African-American friend - _partner,_ who knew? silenced her with a warning hand on her shoulder and a courteous nod at the nurse. "Thank you, ma'am," she said, and led the taller, striking beauty away. "That means you, too," Sarah said to the black man in the corner, right by the patient's head. He didn't seem to hear her, engrossed in quiet conversation with Andrew. Sarah cleared her throat, loudly and rather rudely, Jenny thought, and made an unsubtle gesture with her head indicating that he ought to move along. The man nodded, said a few last words, nodded to a few more from Andrew, kissed him gently, and departed. He had to squeeze around Sarah, who didn't budge so much as an inch from her station in the doorway. Andrew's head fell back against his pillows in weariness, and Sarah smiled a cold smile of satisfaction.

"Jenny." A hand closed on her shoulder, and Jenny turned. It was Gretchen, the charge nurse, and she looked absolutely frazzled. "I hate to ask this, but would you mind staying overnight? We're five nurses short and staffing doesn't think they can give us more than one. It would really help out. Please?"

Jenny sighed, thinking of her nice, warm bed, the soft pillow, the silky sheets, the comforter smelling of fresh soap... and nodded. "Sure, I'll stay," she said, "I'm due to start night shifts next week anyway; might as well get a head start."

Gretchen melted with gratitude. "Thanks, you're a lifesaver!" she said, and hustled off to rearrange assignments.

Jenny took a last glance in at Andrew. He looked so small, in the big white bed. So helpless. So alone. Sarah was in there right now, inserting a catheter, without having bothered to pull the curtain or close the door. Jenny felt her face darken as Andrew's eyes met hers and he turned away in shame. She pulled the curtain across the doorway with a pointed _swish, _but she was pretty sure that Sarah didn't get the point she was trying to make.

Assignments were posted a few minutes later and Jenny began looking up her new load of patients. Alongside the four she already had, she was picking up six more and she mentally shuddered. It was going to be a crazy night. _Oh well, at least I'll stay awake_, she thought, looking for a bright side. One of her new patients was Andrew; she noted, with interest, that the chart said that his preferred name was Angel. _I wonder why nobody's calling him that?_

A little after midnight, she tapped quietly at his door and let herself in, stepping around the curtain and letting her eyes adjust to the dimness. He was awake, and waved weakly at her. "Hi," he said.

"Hey. I'm Jenny, I'll be your nurse tonight," she told him in a low voice as she pulled the blood pressure cuff down from the wall on its long, curly cord. "Can I get your vital signs?"

He offered her his arm and she puffed up the sphygmomanometer, listening to the_ bump-bump-bump_ of his heartbeat and keeping one eye on the gauge as she slowly released the air, until the beat disappeared and she opened up the stopcocks all the way, loosening the cuff and writing down his blood pressure on the chart at the foot of his bed. "One-twelve over sixty-three," she said, "perfect."

Angel grinned and flourished one hand, as if to say, 'what did you expect?' Jenny grinned back, instantly taking a liking to him. "How are you feeling tonight? Are you in any pain?"

He shifted, uncomfortably. "I'm alright, honey," he said at last.

Something about his posture ticked Jenny's nurse's senses. "What number would you give it?" she inquired. "Zero to ten?"

"It's not really _pain_," he hedged, and Jenny raised an eyebrow. "Six," he answered with a sigh. "But I don't want anything."

"No meds?" That was unusual.

Angel shook his head. "No. I don't like drugs. Not even legal ones."

"Not even to help with your pain?"

His breath snorted out through flared nostrils. "Sister, I'm _used_ to pain. I been living with pain for a long time now. I don't want people calling me a drug-seeker for taking meds for it. And I _don't_ want to die so hopped up on medication that I don't know which is the ceiling and which is the floor." He muttered to himself, so low she barely caught the words, "...judging me enough as it is..."

Jenny knelt on the floor by his bed. "Can I at least bring you some tylenol? It'll take the edge off, and it won't affect your mind. Please?"

She could read in his face that he was about to refuse, when a fit of dry coughing gripped him, doubling him up and nearly crushing his chest with the ferocity of the spasm. She handed him a towel, which he held to his mouth as he hacked up what must have felt like half a lung. Finally, emptied out, exhausted, he let the hand with the towel fall limply to the bed, breathing more regularly though still weakly coughing now and again. "You know," he said with forced casualness, face pale and eyes dulled with new pain, "I think I'll take that tylenol, if that's still on the table."

Jenny nodded and went to fetch the pills.

At the med station, her hands hovered over the antitussive section. If anyone could use something to prevent coughing, it was Andrew - _Angel_, she corrected herself, fiercely. She pulled out the bottle of thick, red syrup and carried it into the room. Handing him first the small white paper cup with the two oblong pills at the bottom, she swirled the small bottle. "Bottoms up," she announced, pouring out a gelatinous spoonful. "This'll help with your coughing, hun." At his raised-eyebrows look, she smiled. "Watching you cough makes _me_ want to cough, and I can't afford to be coughing. It's pure self-interest," she joked, then sobered. "Besides, that looked like it hurts. If you won't take anything else for pain, at least help prevent it, hey?"

Angel gave a small snort and suffered the spoon to be slipped into his mouth. He made a face. "Yuck. Hasn't improved much since my mama used to give it to me as a kid."

_You're not _that _much out of childhood,_ she thought with dismay. How did a nineteen year old get this much poise?

Jenny puttered about the room for a little bit, clearing things away, rearranging the furniture, while Angel's eyes drifted closed. She hesitated at the chair by the head of the bed, the one the older African-American man had been sitting in. Angel, who had evidently not been so asleep as he'd seemed, twitched a small smile. "Leave that one there," he requested, tiredly. "Collins will be back as soon as the doors open up."

"Collins; he's your..." Jenny blushed, not sure what word to assign to him. She'd never known any gay people, this was new territory for her.

"Boyfriend," Angel said, promptly and unashamed. He raised his slender hand to his tray table and pushed a picture Jenny's direction. She picked it up. It was Collins, all right, with a woman beside him, whose only mar to her beauty was an unfortunately masculine jaw line... She about dropped the photo. "That's you?" she asked, incredulous, and Angel flourished his hand again. The gesture was much less flamboyant than it had been earlier in the night.

"The one and only," he told her. "In the guise I prefer to wear. Much more me, don't you think?"

Thrown, but not completely off-balance, Jenny smiled. "Better than hospital gowns, that's for sure. Of course, it would take a miracle for anyone to look their best in one of these." She plucked the shapeless material, so often washed that the colors had faded to sky blue and the material was soft against her fingertips. Angel shrugged, visibly sagging, and Jenny tucked the covers around him more snugly. "Call if you need anything," she said, placing the call light in easy reach before slipping out the door and off to check on her other patients.

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><p>It was her night off, and Jenny was spending it like she always did - sitting in front of her typewriter, staring at a blank sheet of paper and hoping that <em>something<em> would emerge from her brain, run down her fingers, and spread itself over the page. She rather fancied herself as a writer, though she lacked the fortitude to do it full time. If there was anything she admired about Angel and his friends, it was the devotion they had to their art.

She clacked off a paragraph, reread it, balled it up, and tossed it at the can, where it bounced off and rolled into a corner. Her cousin, Paul, had offered to publish her stories in his newssheet. If she could ever finish one, that is. The problem was... the problem was, she was singularly uninspired by anything that was happening in her life lately. Or anywhere, for that matter. Work had started to drag her down, burying her creativity alive.

The clacking of the keys made her glance up, to find that she'd been typing her thoughts without her thoughts catching on. _Work, huh?_ she thought. Well, it was an option. They _did_ say, write what you know. She rattled off a few anecdotes about patients she knew, nurses she worked with, visitors who had made an impression. Her version of a diary, and none of it would ever see the printed word, otherwise she would be in so much trouble for violating patient confidentiality. Not to mention her coworkers - she grimaced. She could just _see_ Sarah's face if she ever found out that her anti-gay rant had made it into print. Still... she kept the sheets. Change the name, alter the situation, mix in enough fiction that the bald facts weren't quite so bald...

And then Jenny shook her head at herself. As if she was ever going to get _anything_ published. She was a nurse; she ought to just be happy with that.

Dawn was just peeking its head above the horizon as she settled in to sleep. Hopefully, maybe, tomorrow would bring new insights. Or at least, new material.

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><p>At the start of one night shift, about a week later, after Collins had been made - reluctantly - to leave, Jenny entered Angel's room with several gift bags and a furtive look over her shoulder. "Hey, Angel," she greeted.<p>

The patient looked up, a weary and heartsick expression on his face. Jenny's heart nearly broke with it; she hated seeing Angel's face every evening after his boyfriend had been kicked out. "Hey, Jenny," he said, listlessly, and then his eyes lit on the bags. "What've you got there?" A note of interest crept into his voice.

Jenny heaped the spoils of her afternoon's shopping trip on the tray table. "A little something to help get your spark back," she said with a mischievous grin, and began opening packages.

She'd merely been guessing at colors and tones, but from the look on Angel's face as she spread out her booty, she'd guessed well. Foundation, blusher, lipstick, eyeshadow in various colors, mascara... Angel reached for several of the delicate glass containers as Jenny pulled out the mirror concealed beneath the tray table, turning them over in his delicate hands, made more frail by the wasting effects of his disease. "Jenny, I can't take this," he said. "It's too much. I - There's a rule against it, isn't there?"

Jenny didn't bother to hide the grin as she set out the various brushes, new and beckoning in their plastic sheaths. She saw how Angel's fingers twitched, wanting to pick them up. "If _you_ were giving gifts to _me,_ that would be wrong. If _I _were planning to seduce _you_, there'd be a problem. But since I'm handing out the largess and you're clearly not interested in me... nope, no problem. How's the height, can you see okay?" she asked, adjusting the tray table so that Angel could see his reflection more easily.

He nodded. When he looked up at her, his eyes were suspiciously bright. "Thanks, Jenny," he said, voice a hoarse whisper. "This is... Thank you." He took her hand and squeezed it, and she squeezed back.

"Your smile is worth it, hun," she told him. She was about to say more when she heard the telltale warning bell that told of someone getting out of bed who wasn't supposed to. "Have a good night," she called back over her shoulder as she darted out of the room.

Hospital shifts being what they were, Jenny didn't get back in to see him for quite some time. When she finally did, he had fallen asleep, smiling. The beauty products were lined up on the tray table, which had been pushed to the side, though the mirror was still up. Angel himself - herself? Jenny wasn't sure how that worked - looked stunning, and Jenny could see, for the first time, the glimmer of the beautiful woman in the photograph.

Jenny shut the door behind herself as she left. She was smiling.

* * *

><p><em>Brrrring...Brrrring...Brrrin-<em>

"...hello?" Jenny's voice was hazy with sleep. She glanced at the clock, blinked, then glanced again. _Damn. It's only ten?_ Night shifts were brutal enough without having someone wake her up at her midnight equivalent.

"Jenny?" It was Gretchen. "I'm sorry to wake you up, but we're running short. Again. Would you be able to come in at seven instead of eleven? It would really help us out."

Jenny could think of a thousand things she'd rather do than come in early. Unfortunately, her brain was too sleep-muddied to come up with any of them at that moment and so what popped out of her mouth was, "Sure. Fine. See you then." She didn't hear Gretchen's expression of thanks, being too busy trying to figure out how to set her alarm ahead a couple of hours. _They really, really ought to make these things easier_, she thought as she punched a few random buttons, got to the point where she was pretty sure that it would wake her up at either five in the afternoon or else let her sleep until five in the morning - she sincerely hoped it was the former - and finally flipped her pillow to the cool side and let her consciousness drift.

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><p>Fortunately, she'd guessed right and her alarm woke her at five pm on the dot, giving her just enough time to shower, dress, and make it to work before her seven o'clock shift started.<p>

It was semi-controlled chaos on the floor. Three call lights were dinging, physical therapy had at least two patients up and walking in the halls, and a team of doctors and residents - why they all had to travel in packs like that Jenny would never know - was shuffling from room to room. The doctor in charge was obvious in the way he barked out orders, asked questions of the nodding group of residents around him, and dressed almost casually in khakis and a wrinkled polo, rendered acceptable only by the white lab coat worn over the top of it all. Only doctors at the top of their profession, Jenny reflected, could get away with flaunting the dress code like that.

Several of her fellow nurses voiced their thanks as she wrote down her assignment, usually without breaking stride as they hurried down the hall to put out fires, or at least, answer call lights. Jenny mentally groaned, then shrugged. When a shift started out this crazy, there was only one way to go. She just hoped it would go the _right_ direction...

An hour and a half later, she wasn't sure if it was going any direction beyond in crazy circles. She groaned as she straightened, her back popping back into place vertebra-by-vertebra. Getting a three-hundred-and-fifty pound woman off of a bedpan was a feat equaled only by that of getting her on one. And Jenny had done it twice this shift already. _How many hours until I go home?_ she wondered, longingly.

She limped past the row of rooms on her way to the desk, when her eye was arrested by the occupant of Room 209. Andrew was clearly gone, and in his place, a lovely, dark-haired woman lay, smiling. Collins was at her bedside, holding her hand. When she saw Jenny passing by, she waved her in. "Jenny!" Angel called. "Come on in. Meet the real me."

Jenny didn't have the time, but, well... it was Angel. And she needed a bit of a break. And it would only be a few minutes. She went in.

"Angel, you look fabulous," she said, and she meant it. The makeup of the night before had been redone, her fingernails and - Jenny peeked - her toenails painted, and best of all, her wig was on. Angel looked better than she had in days.

"And how else?" the young patient asked, rhetorically, grinning widely.

Collins squeezed Angel's hand. "It's made a world of difference in my baby," he said. His smile was genuine, but his eyes were tight. The hospital did that to people, thought Jenny. Surface happiness, surface interactions, but alone and scared down deep. Angel's lab results had come back near the end of her shift last night; his T-cells were down, and the rest of his lab values were out of whack. It was nearing time.

"Hey, who couldn't love Angel?" Jenny asked, quietly. "Once she showed me her photos, I knew I had to see her for myself. And I have to say, the camera doesn't flatter you," she grinned, and Angel grinned back.

The door burst open without so much as a courtesy knock, and Sarah came in. "Alright," she said, sourly. "Visiting hours are over. Out. Oh," she caught sight of Jenny. "You. Don't you have patients to see to?"

Jenny glanced up at the clock. It was only 8:45, fifteen minutes left. A glance over at Collins showed him making that same calculation, and then he got a stubborn look on his face. Sarah's expression was just as mulish, and Jenny was pretty sure she was gearing up for a fight, possibly including calling on security to escort Collins off the premises entirely; it had been done before, with recalcitrant visitors who had posed a danger to staff or patients.

_Damn it_, she thought. _No way is Sarah getting her own way_. She'd had it in for Andrew since he'd arrived on the floor. _Not today._

"Sarah, can I speak to you for a minute?" she said, tipping her head towards the hallway, hoping to stave off the confrontation.

But Sarah was not to be dissuaded. "After he's gone," she said, folding her arms across her ample chest and glaring at the couple.

"I really think we need to speak _now_," Jenny persisted.

"And I really think it can wait."

_Oh for the love of..._ "Sarah, the rules state that family can stay past visiting hours."

"So?"

"So Collins is Andrew's family. He can stay here as long as he wants."

The older woman hissed. "They're not _family_. Not by blood, not by law. Just by filthy habits that-"

"Collins," Jenny interrupted, and the African-American man started, to be pulled so abruptly into the argument.

"Yeah...?"

"You love Angel, right?"

He nodded. "With all my heart."

"And Angel, you love Collins?"

Angel nodded, squeezing Collins' hand tightly. "Forever and always."

"Then that's good enough for me. We've let unmarried couples stay together before; this is no different."

"But -"

"_Enough_, Sarah." Jenny was suddenly in her physical space, crowding her out the door.

"The manager's going to hear about this!" Sarah hissed, and Jenny shrugged.

"You think I haven't been watching how you treat Andrew? And writing it down?" She hadn't, but Sarah didn't know that. "We don't treat our patients that way, Sarah. Not for any reason. You go to the manager about this, and I'll tell her everything." Her voice, already cold, went arctic. "What you will do, Sarah, is lodge a formal request that you no longer be assigned to the Schunard patient. You will have nothing further to do with him, or them, until such time as he leaves our care. Got that?"

She didn't wait to see what Sarah said, merely turning to the unit secretary and ordering up a cot for room 209. The next time she swung by there, Collins shot her a look of gratitude. The cot was still folded up in a corner, ignored, as he seemed to prefer sitting beside the bed, holding Angel's hand as she slept. The look on her face was one of pure peace.

* * *

><p>Angel died three days later, on a night in the tail end of October. He'd been declining steadily, and it wasn't a shock to anyone, except that it was <em>this<em> day, _this _hour. Her last hours were spent in Collins' arms as he held his love, rocking her back and forth and murmuring endearments into her ear that no one could hear but the two of them.

Jenny wept openly at the funeral. It was not the first such ceremony she'd ever been to, nor would it be the last. But it was, she thought, one of the most special she'd ever had the privilege to attend.

She clasped Collins' hand at the end, expressing her sorrow at his loss, and he pulled her into a hug.

"Thank you," he muttered into her shoulder. "Thank you."

She couldn't think of any words to say after that, but none were needed. She squeezed him tightly until he released her, and she went home to shed her own tears in private.

And then she sat down at her typewriter, sliding in a fresh, clean white sheet of paper.

"The Rights of Angels," she typed. "One person's struggle with AIDS, and the healthcare system that needs to change."

She typed for a solid hour. When she was finished, she looked through the dense text. _Here's hoping Paul can find something to do with this,_ she thought, as she slid the sheets into an envelope and sent it off through the mail.

"Angel, if nothing else, your death will not be in vain," she said aloud, and closed the lid of the mailbox with a decided clunk.


End file.
